No— the coasts have substantially higher property values. A cartogram scaled by population is far less dramatically distorted:
http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0110/graphics/cartogram_3-l...
The big cities of Texas and the Great Lakes regions barely show up on the property value map.
Roughly that's all it's showing. I'd be far more interested in the cartogram of land value/population. I suspect it would do much more to show some of the oddities that I'm sure exist. (i.e. Park City where a lot of people have really expensive vacation homes for skiing and don't live there.)
Not quite fair. Usually the xkcd syndrome is caused by plotting density of something that is intrinsic to people e.g. red hair. You end up with a heatmap of population.
Here, land prices may be higher because more people are there bidding up the prices. But its not a direct property of the individuals. So the heatmap effect is indirect.
No, unless I'm mistaken, it's literally the sum value of all the bare land, not including the value of the buildings. California seems to have a third of value in the United States, and the Northeast Corridor has another third, but neither have a third of the population.
(edit: I stand corrected, but it's still notable that property value and density aren't necessarily correlated.)
If you follow the one of the links in the story, you'll see that one of the reasons the housing prices in NYC and SF are so high is the unwillingness of current residents to allow more construction to allow greater housing density. So, in this case, it isn't a proxy for population density since the high prices are actually a symptom of below-optimal population density.
It's related to population density. A lot more people want and try to live in NYC than Birmingham, AL. More people living and desiring to live per same square mileage ~ increased price of property.
This is electoral votes per county, which is close to being population-weighted. What you'll find is that it's more moderate than the land-value cartogram, especially on the West Coast and Florida. Land values trend similarly to population densities, but actually exceed them.
Not quite... If that were so, you'd expect Texas to be visibly bigger than Florida (27M vs. 20M), but their area in the distorted land value map appears to be about the same.
> The demand to live in these places is soaring, but the desire among incumbents to accommodate newcomers is low
Sums up why we ended up in Bend, Oregon rather than Boulder, Colorado. In the latter, there is a small but significant group of people whose idea is that the area needs fewer jobs, not smarter housing.
As a lifetime Oregonian, I enjoy Bend and get out there a couple times a year. My family even considered moving there a few years ago in search of a place with more sun. But in deciding between Boulder and Bend, we ended up choosing Boulder, well actually Broomfield, but Boulder was the draw, because as you found Boulder housing prices were too high.
Which leads me to the question, did you consider living outside of Boulder to still get most of the things on your checklist, but not face the high housing prices or difficult political climate?
The problem with Bend, as we came to decide, was there is no "outside of Bend", it's an island with not much of any other place to go for jobs, housing, diversity. Add in the fact that the jobs that are there don't support the house prices. With Boulder, you can always fall back to Denver or one of the many suburbs if your independent business or remote job falls through.
We ultimately moved back to the Portland area for other reasons, but would still choose Boulder/Denver over Bend if we had to do it again.
Really nice piece. I basically moved from SF to Boulder (with stops abroad in between). What you're talking about in the blog is playing out right now with the "make growth pay it's own way".
They are smart people spearheading these anti-growth measures. They want (like you said) the Boulder from 30 years ago. They are motivated, smart, and have the time to attack growth.
And cutting back on construction is only going to turn this place into more of bland sanitized white suburb college town. There's little to no culture or character or funkiness here and cutting off growth will only serve to stamp it out more.
People here like to say silly things like "entrepreneur capital of america" or "startup hub" or silly things like that. Shoot, coming from SF, this place doesn't have even a drop in the bucket of what the bay has. I'm not saying that's bad or good but thinking it's a real tech hub is a joke.
But if Boulder looked more like Denver (or Bend like Portland), you might not have made that choice, right? I'm guessing that you wanted those spots because they were semi-rural mountain cities with low population density.
So even if you did move to Boulder, you'd probably oppose the construction of more high-density housing, right?
How are you liking Bend? I remember reading some of your comments on HN a few years ago since we were living in Portland. In Seattle now and own a place, but are thinking someday we might sell it and move to Bend. We've always found central Oregon uniquely beautiful. My friend just bought a place in Boulder, and I visited and enjoyed hanging out there. Things did seem a bit more expensive.
From your blog, it looks like you were pricing sizable houses rather than higher density housing like a 2br/2ba condo, which can be found for much less. Although I grew up in Alaska, I have no regrets about buying a modest condo next to trails and with a short bike commute instead of a larger place further from everything I care about. Anyway, there would be more incentive to build high-density housing if more people wanted to buy it instead of writing off the housing market as insane and going elsewhere (be it the eastern suburbs or somewhere completely different as you did).
Even though there does seem to be a large influx of people in cities like SF, NYC, Austin, it seems like there is going to be an even larger exodus to smaller towns with sane costs of living in the coming years. It could also be my that my friends are all also finally entering the age where we want to buy homes, so these sorts of places are more appealing than ever.
Bend is lovely. I'm curious, what was it like finding a place to live? Bend is somewhat notorious right now for it's <1% rental vacancy rates, which may be the lowest in the country. There was a news story earlier this year about a local medical center's new hires having a hard time finding a place to live -- I think one person even gave up and left their job because of it.
How can the random large splotches be translated into usefulness or meaning? The gif seems to imply that the areas are resized based on their value, that is SUPER not helpful. And the bucket $40b - $1tr?! Almost everything falls in that bucket! I don't think this map is of great value.
I thought that bucket was large too, but then I realized it is only used for color, not size. So size of county is a more granular measure for housing measure, if that's what you're looking for.
EDIT: I see, you're saying the areas are hard to compare. Good point!
The fact that people don't all prefer everywhere equally is a "troubling inequality"? Property value is just a reflection of demand vs. supply. People want to live in some areas of the country more than in others, but, since the area is limited, the increased desire drives prices up.
Is it really so shocking that more people would rather live in San Francisco than Alabama?
>Folks who can’t afford to live in those places don’t get to take advantage of those labor markets. The demand to live in these places is soaring, but the desire among incumbents to accommodate newcomers is low. Hence NIMBYism, high housing costs, severe inequality—the whole shebang.
NYC has had a massive residential construction boom (see Williamsburg, downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, &c). Almost all of the housing that goes up is luxury and seems to do very little to bring down the city's extreme housing costs. Maybe severe inequality is driven by factors other than just NIMBYism? The new condos seem to attract wealthy outsiders.
From the standpoint of at least one "user", I would have gotten a lot more value out of the animation if I could control it (e.g. with a slider). The pulsing back and forth makes it more difficult for me to pinpoint something of interest (e.g. a less expensive city like Detroit) and then track it.
Going down into the rabbit hole, here is a JSON file [1] containing the county level data from the Economist. I think that this is the source of the data used by the author.
The conclusions from the article seemed a bit rushed. NYC and the Bay Area are pretty different when it comes to NIMBY policies and commutes from low income areas to high income.
A well-known prior art of this idea -- and perhaps not even the first -- is Worldmapper at http://www.worldmapper.org/. "The world as you have never seen before" contains striking world maps with their areas proportional to measures like population (even the population in AD 1), income, aircraft flights, toy exports, nuclear weapons, languages, people killed by floods and 600 more.
i kind of understand why people here frequently against high-density - the way it is done in US ends up with pretty unlivable space of towering boxes surrounded by concrete and asphalt (which is just obvious result of profit maximization while obeying height limits, etc.. While i think having a 200 stories tower surrounded by a park would be better than a bunch of 20-30 stories mid-towers sticking out of concrete/asphalt space)
I feel that sound is a big part of it too. European buildings tend to be a titch bit better about this, but American ones are downright terrible. I'd love to live in a apartment building for a long time, but the sound is what gets me. I can't play my sound as loud as I want, I can't stand other people ignoring that the walls are paper thin, I hear every toilet flush and chopping of carrots in the building. If you can find a way to really dampen the sound, then I feel a lot of people wouldn't mind the high density quite as much.
>While i think having a 200 stories tower surrounded by a park would be better than a bunch of 20-30 stories mid-towers sticking out of concrete/asphalt space)
Ugh, please no. This is essentially what Le Corbusier advocated and the results are disasterous. It leads to all of the downsides of density. Lots of people taking up space, but none of the benefits (easy access to shopping, entertainment, school, work, etc.), because everything's so damn far away from each other.
> "The stubborn unwillingness of incumbent homeowners in highly productive places—namely San Francisco and New York City, which are barely visible on the land-area map, but dominate the housing value map—is a huge drain on the nation’s economy." Are they trying to say that if people didn't have to spend as much on housing then there would be greater GDP?
I'm guessing you generate these by fixing three points along the boundary and then find the conformal map with the prescribed scale ratio at each point. Cool tech. If only this was a useful way to present the information. Color contours work much better.
I can't help thinking this trend is at its zenith. Where economic growth is faltering, we're seeing de-urbanization, and I would be long the yellow areas and short the red, because if there is any upset to the JIT way our cities operate (London for example is said to have a mere 4 days worth food in stock), for reasons of climate change or political upheaval or some other reason (no more opportunity in overcrowded cities?), the rural areas on which we still enormously depend for food and water may suddenly revalue upwards.
This appears to be housing value, not property value. So this is leaving off commercial property, which is probably usually proportionate to housing value, and agriculture land, which isn't.
It would be interesting to see areas cross referenced by job creation and relative affordability over time. Perhaps there are counties whose plans did provide growth without economic isolation?
Awesome idea! If they could make it less ugly, I would prefer standardizing on this as a way to plot geographic data in certain cases.
Graphing by land area often means spending huge chunks of the map where nothing (relevant to a particular purpose) happens, and cramming all the interesting stuff into a few places on the coasts.
(Note all the hedges and caveats; I don't want to trivialize anyone's home here, but we definitely see this effect a lot.)
While it looks extremely cool, is this really the best way to visualise this data?
Every method of visualisation has its strengths and pitfalls. One of the pitfalls of this method is that it always looks rather dramatic, regardless of the data. Changing the shape of well-known things gives an uneasy feeling, regardless of what you map.
Only data that is perfectly equal will not result in arbitrary distortions. The amount of distortion, magnitude of the local scale factor, is (or should be) a parameter of the visualisation, just like the decision of using a fiery red-yellow colour gradient.
Linked source has a bit more info on what exactly they did. Which is simply substituting area for value in dollars. Only makes sense if the data somewhat follows a normal distribution. And I'm going to guess here, property value does not, at all. It's not even bounded. I'd have picked log value, because an exponential distribution for the value is a much more reasonable assumption.
In case of a visualisation like this, I might actually decide to do something that is generally frowned upon: change the "origin" of the data. That is, add some constant value to the scale factors, to smooth out the severity of the distortions a little. If I were mapping the log value that wouldn't be necessary since it'd be equivalent to scaling dollar values to $1000 or $1M, etc.
I'm trying to remember other examples where data was mapped to local scale in a non-shape preserving way.
The only thing I can come up with was a sort of homunculus visualisation (I forget if it was just a drawing or actually made into a 3d clay statuette). It scaled our body parts roughly proportional to the volume of our brain dedicated to it. So you'd get a giant head with huge bulging eyes, etc. It looked weird, funny, still somewhat human/cartoonish. It showed things as "this is MUCH bigger than that" or "huh I didn't realise my tongue was that important". It wasn't a very clear visualisation, but I'm also hard pressed to come up with a better way to do it.
In other words, this type of visualisation helps to show the data in a mostly qualitative way, not quantitative. And like the homunculus example, the data doesn't need to be super exact (we can't estimate relative area/volume of irregular shapes very well).
[+] [-] jbattle|10 years ago|reply
https://xkcd.com/1138/
[+] [-] akgerber|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ticviking|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|10 years ago|reply
Here, land prices may be higher because more people are there bidding up the prices. But its not a direct property of the individuals. So the heatmap effect is indirect.
Maybe not big point, but there it is.
[+] [-] judemelancon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambdasquirrel|10 years ago|reply
(edit: I stand corrected, but it's still notable that property value and density aren't necessarily correlated.)
[+] [-] wahsd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SonicSoul|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curun1r|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aflyax|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/countycart...
[+] [-] jcl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|10 years ago|reply
Not really, though population density is correlated with high land values, so there are obvious similarities.
[+] [-] Retric|10 years ago|reply
PS: This is really a map of wealth * population.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] davidw|10 years ago|reply
Sums up why we ended up in Bend, Oregon rather than Boulder, Colorado. In the latter, there is a small but significant group of people whose idea is that the area needs fewer jobs, not smarter housing.
Edit: http://journal.dedasys.com/2015/06/18/boulder-colorado-vs-be... - more about our choice, for the curious.
[+] [-] mountaineer|10 years ago|reply
Which leads me to the question, did you consider living outside of Boulder to still get most of the things on your checklist, but not face the high housing prices or difficult political climate?
The problem with Bend, as we came to decide, was there is no "outside of Bend", it's an island with not much of any other place to go for jobs, housing, diversity. Add in the fact that the jobs that are there don't support the house prices. With Boulder, you can always fall back to Denver or one of the many suburbs if your independent business or remote job falls through.
We ultimately moved back to the Portland area for other reasons, but would still choose Boulder/Denver over Bend if we had to do it again.
[+] [-] kpennell|10 years ago|reply
http://openboulder.org/ob-opposes-two-growth-related-ballot-...
They are smart people spearheading these anti-growth measures. They want (like you said) the Boulder from 30 years ago. They are motivated, smart, and have the time to attack growth.
And cutting back on construction is only going to turn this place into more of bland sanitized white suburb college town. There's little to no culture or character or funkiness here and cutting off growth will only serve to stamp it out more.
People here like to say silly things like "entrepreneur capital of america" or "startup hub" or silly things like that. Shoot, coming from SF, this place doesn't have even a drop in the bucket of what the bay has. I'm not saying that's bad or good but thinking it's a real tech hub is a joke.
[+] [-] ajross|10 years ago|reply
So even if you did move to Boulder, you'd probably oppose the construction of more high-density housing, right?
[+] [-] larrykubin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedbrown|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevesearer|10 years ago|reply
Even though there does seem to be a large influx of people in cities like SF, NYC, Austin, it seems like there is going to be an even larger exodus to smaller towns with sane costs of living in the coming years. It could also be my that my friends are all also finally entering the age where we want to buy homes, so these sorts of places are more appealing than ever.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] meej|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kpennell|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kpennell|10 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler
I especially liked this Vox piece on what actually happens in the process of trying to build more housing in SF:
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/15/8782235/san-francisco-housing-c...
[+] [-] personjerry|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seccess|10 years ago|reply
EDIT: I see, you're saying the areas are hard to compare. Good point!
[+] [-] angersock|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aflyax|10 years ago|reply
Is it really so shocking that more people would rather live in San Francisco than Alabama?
[+] [-] iskander|10 years ago|reply
NYC has had a massive residential construction boom (see Williamsburg, downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, &c). Almost all of the housing that goes up is luxury and seems to do very little to bring down the city's extreme housing costs. Maybe severe inequality is driven by factors other than just NIMBYism? The new condos seem to attract wealthy outsiders.
[+] [-] tuckermi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmxt|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://infographics.economist.com/2015/ASBTest/Land/js/count...
[+] [-] breck|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwhitman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jschulenklopper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trhway|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Balgair|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xxpor|10 years ago|reply
Ugh, please no. This is essentially what Le Corbusier advocated and the results are disasterous. It leads to all of the downsides of density. Lots of people taking up space, but none of the benefits (easy access to shopping, entertainment, school, work, etc.), because everything's so damn far away from each other.
[+] [-] lubesGordi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shasta|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vegabook|10 years ago|reply
I can't help thinking this trend is at its zenith. Where economic growth is faltering, we're seeing de-urbanization, and I would be long the yellow areas and short the red, because if there is any upset to the JIT way our cities operate (London for example is said to have a mere 4 days worth food in stock), for reasons of climate change or political upheaval or some other reason (no more opportunity in overcrowded cities?), the rural areas on which we still enormously depend for food and water may suddenly revalue upwards.
[+] [-] herdrick|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickhalfasleep|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amenghra|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SilasX|10 years ago|reply
Graphing by land area often means spending huge chunks of the map where nothing (relevant to a particular purpose) happens, and cramming all the interesting stuff into a few places on the coasts.
(Note all the hedges and caveats; I don't want to trivialize anyone's home here, but we definitely see this effect a lot.)
[+] [-] tripzilch|10 years ago|reply
Every method of visualisation has its strengths and pitfalls. One of the pitfalls of this method is that it always looks rather dramatic, regardless of the data. Changing the shape of well-known things gives an uneasy feeling, regardless of what you map.
Only data that is perfectly equal will not result in arbitrary distortions. The amount of distortion, magnitude of the local scale factor, is (or should be) a parameter of the visualisation, just like the decision of using a fiery red-yellow colour gradient.
Linked source has a bit more info on what exactly they did. Which is simply substituting area for value in dollars. Only makes sense if the data somewhat follows a normal distribution. And I'm going to guess here, property value does not, at all. It's not even bounded. I'd have picked log value, because an exponential distribution for the value is a much more reasonable assumption.
In case of a visualisation like this, I might actually decide to do something that is generally frowned upon: change the "origin" of the data. That is, add some constant value to the scale factors, to smooth out the severity of the distortions a little. If I were mapping the log value that wouldn't be necessary since it'd be equivalent to scaling dollar values to $1000 or $1M, etc.
I'm trying to remember other examples where data was mapped to local scale in a non-shape preserving way.
The only thing I can come up with was a sort of homunculus visualisation (I forget if it was just a drawing or actually made into a 3d clay statuette). It scaled our body parts roughly proportional to the volume of our brain dedicated to it. So you'd get a giant head with huge bulging eyes, etc. It looked weird, funny, still somewhat human/cartoonish. It showed things as "this is MUCH bigger than that" or "huh I didn't realise my tongue was that important". It wasn't a very clear visualisation, but I'm also hard pressed to come up with a better way to do it.
In other words, this type of visualisation helps to show the data in a mostly qualitative way, not quantitative. And like the homunculus example, the data doesn't need to be super exact (we can't estimate relative area/volume of irregular shapes very well).
But it looks cool.